Paul Barrett, deputy director of NYU Stern’s center for business and human rights, called the departures part of the “longer term erosion” of Twitter’s credibility and the quality of content on it.
“If you have prestigious mainstream resources that are known for being reliable basically setting sail and saying, ‘We’re not going to participate here anymore,’ I think inevitably users who have respect for those outlets are going to think twice about whether it’s worth checking in on Twitter,” he said.
As tension rises over how Musk is running Twitter, the billionaire CEO is keeping up his public persona and sitting for interviews with select media organizations. Following his interview with BBC News on the heels of adding the labels, Musk sat for an interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson in a conversation that aired this week.
After Musk took over Twitter at the end of October, he announced several changes to long-standing policies and moderation measures.
Musk expanded features on Twitter Blue — a service that lets users pay for blue checkmarks and other special perks — and allowed back users once banned, including former President Trump.
Those moves led to concerns about how media figures would continue to use the platform.
Musk’s latest barb to the press was the addition of “state-affiliated” labels earlier this month to accounts for some news outlets, including NPR, PBS and BBC. While Musk eventually walked the labels back to “government funded,” the decision was a turning point that led NPR and PBS to quit the site.
CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster, joined the U.S. news outlets and announced Monday that they will also be pausing their Twitter use after being slapped with a “government-funded media” label. The CBC said “Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on @Twitter.”
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
